Anyone use Skype/Voip or Vonage instead of a cell phone?

I'm looking for ways to cut my monthly costs and been thinking of ditching my cell phone and monthly plan for a cheaper alternative like skype or vonage. Right now I am on T-mobile family plan with internet (for my business), but the monthly bill is like $135/mo because my wife has a cell phone with limited internet usage. Even if i get rid of my wife's internet and her android phone, the bill will still be over $100/mo and I need to shave that down a lot more, so I'm looking for ways or alternatives for the cell phone altogether.

So far I'm seeing a lot of hype on Skype and Vonage but never used them. However, their service rates look pretty cheap, a LOT cheaper! Does anyone solely use these services without a cell phone plan? I have a nexus one android phone, will I be able to use this with either of these and not have a contract with T-mobile? Not really sure how they work with an existing cell phone like mine, if it does work.

I have a business and need access to the internet when I am not at home. So I would like to have something where I can have both the internet and make Voip pc phone calls outside home.

Does anyone have a cheap solution? What about using a netbook with a wireless internet adapter like "clear" internet. Will Voip phone calls work well on 3G & 4G ? or will calls have shaky connection/delays/quality issues??

Re: Anyone use Skype/Voip or Vonage instead of a cell phone?

how about going unlimited mobile minutes and dropping all landlines, lowering cost a different way? you can only really lower costs by lowering your minutes or pooling lines into family plans (spreading the cost across multiple people).

The only "cheap" solution is to wifi hotspot it where you do everything mobile from a laptop, including calling. other than that you won't save $$$ just look up the plans from the major carriers. You could do the cutrate pageplus/walmart or net10/target solution with dumbphone, many minutes and unlimited or many MB of mobile web and email, but for two lines you'll still pay quite a bit and need to verify coverage.

skype & vonage requires data/internet (no miracle savings). skype is horrible for voice over 3G (data), plus it sucks up data requiring more expensive data plans. Forget "4G" (ie. 3.5G in reality, if that) as that offers no benefit and higher cost/surcharges. As you know Tmobile drops down to her 2G/Edge knees faster than a well... er.

Once you NEED mobile data your options are limited as are cost savings. The best realistic & reliable way to cut your $ is to go with a lower minute plan and possibly less data (tmobile doesn't have tiers for smartphones, whereas at&t has $15/250MB month).

As evil as they have become as a corporation whose mantra is "do no evil", you can use google voice for unlimited outgoing calling if your carrier has friends&family/a-list free calling favorite numbers. Unfortunately Tmobile doesn't have "friends and family" or "a-list" so you're stuck there, neither does sprint. Also verizon/att don't give favorites with plans for less than 700 minutes (cheapest plan gets not favorites thus no googlevoice). This goees back to the original point of there is no real way to cut costs significantly below what you're paying.

tmobile does allow voice/data off contract on a smartphone like nexus one, but you can't activate said smartphone without data. You'd have to be off-contract and change the sim card from an established tmobile dumb phone without data. Then your phone and wifi would work on the N1, without data costs.

i've used vonage 4 years ago and have one line still for a business but i've transitioned away to ISP provided triple-play accounts (voice, data, tv). For mobile it's all about pooling lines & family plans (even under a smalll business account) .. glen

Re: Anyone use Skype/Voip or Vonage instead of a cell phone?

i use vonage and it works well however after the first year i believe its not all that cheap , its like 30 a month, but i call europe a lot which is included so its fine.

For mobile phone my wife uses virgin mobile. Not sure if you can get it. Really cheap and they use the sprint network. Have had no issues . I think its like 30 bucks unlimited data and txt, and 300 minutes or 40 for 1200. Hard to beat.

Skype was okay but you need to buy a number to be called and you need to pay per call to call to people who have no skype.

I also have tossed the idea to discontinue landlines all together. Not really using it besides the Europe calls